Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  Something was very, very wrong. I sounded like a rewound tape.

  Emma lifted her head fully and stared at me.

  “How did you know it was Tad?” she asked in a tiny voice, not noticing that something was wrong. With me. Something was desperately wrong. Emma was so deep in her pain that it radiated out, it filled the room, taking over everything, taking over me, forcing its way into my body and rearranging my brain. Like a . . .

  As I stared at her, gaping, certainty hit me.

  No one was faking.

  It was Emma.

  It had been Emma the whole time.

  Part 5

  Mid-March

  QUINQUATRIA

  Aristotle said to Alexander, that a mind well furnished was more beautiful than a body richly arrayed. What can be more odious to man, and offensive to God, than ignorance.

  REGINALD SCOTT

  A DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT, 1654

  Chapter 23

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

  What do you mean, it’s been Emma this whole time?” the woman from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health asked me, putting down her pen.

  “Don’t you see?” I was getting agitated. “Of course it’s been her!”

  “Colleen,” the woman said in her most let’s-be-reasonable-now voice. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I don’t care that it doesn’t make sense. It’s not my job to make sense! I’m telling you, it’s her. It’s Emma. Causing it. She is,” I insisted.

  “All right. Let’s think this through. How exactly would you say she’s been doing . . . whatever it is you think she’s been doing?”

  “What do you mean, how?” My hands worked over my kneecaps, digging my nails into my shins.

  “What’s the mechanism? How does it work? The causality, Colleen. The vector for the disease. What is it?” The woman eyed me carefully, waiting.

  I didn’t think she was messing with me, because her face looked reasonably plain and serious, but honestly, wasn’t she supposed to be the expert? Weren’t weird diseases, like, her specialty?

  “How should I know what the vector is? All I know is, it’s totally got to be her. Just look at what’s happened.”

  “But I thought you just said that all the girls were faking. You were to the point of challenging Anjali about it. You were going to tell your parents. Isn’t that what you think happened?”

  The woman, one of the two people in white windbreakers standing around doing nothing while Bethany Witherspoon was publicity-whoring it up all over school, hadn’t picked up her pen. She’d looked really interested when I’d banged on the van door an hour ago. And she’d been really, really interested when some of my words came out in the wrong order at first. I got a handle on it, though. It wasn’t that bad. My head still ached, but the words were basically back to normal.

  That’s how I knew for sure.

  I’d stood up, woozy like I was drunk, and stumbled out of Emma’s room. She didn’t try to stop me, she just said, “Colleen?” like she was confused, waking up from a trance. Almost like she hadn’t understood that I was there, behind her own pain. I stumbled down the stairs, clutching the handrail for support. The pain lessened with each step I took farther away from Emma. Her mom was nowhere to be found.

  “Colleen?” Emma called down the stairs, her voice on the edge of panic. “What’s wrong?”

  I couldn’t say anything. I was afraid to talk.

  “Later!” I called up to her. “Sorry.”

  If I said only one word, it couldn’t come out backward.

  I half ran, half shambled toward school. I had my phone, and I texted Spence. I was relieved to see that I could text in the right order.

  Weird stuff happening . . . Can you come? At St. Js.

  A minute later my phone vibrated with his response. I’d been clutching it in my hand, waiting. My palms were sweating.

  Coming.

  That one word was enough. When I got back to campus, I marched up to the Department of Public Health Mobile Unit van and banged until someone opened the door.

  But this conversation wasn’t going as I’d planned.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought happened. I was doing my research project on The Crucible, and I found out that Ann Putnam said all the girls were faking. It just seemed so obvious once I saw it spelled out like that. I didn’t know why nobody had figured that out sooner. But I was afraid of getting them all in trouble, so . . . But they’re not faking! I’m not faking! I was looking right at Emma, and it was like something came out of her and went into me and it made me talk backward!”

  I was getting shrill, and she’d stopped listening. Never get shrill, that’s what my mother tells me. People stop listening to women the minute they get shrill. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. I had to make her understand.

  The Public Health woman looked at me with what she probably thought was a kindly expression.

  “Colleen,” she said gently. “I don’t think you’re faking. And I can see how upset this is making you. Have you ever heard of a logical principle called Occam’s Razor?”

  “What?” I squealed.

  Okay, still shrill. Keep it together, Rowley. You will not get anywhere by punching a Public Health official in the face.

  “No. I don’t think so,” I said, pretending to be calm. “It’s what?”

  “Occam’s Razor,” she lectured, “basically says that the simplest explanation to a problem is the one most likely to be true.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So what?”

  “Do you think the suggestion that your friend Emma Blackburn is somehow responsible for the widespread incidence of serious symptoms among fifty-five teenage girls, using a power that is inexplicable, invisible, and heretofore never documented, is the simplest explanation for the Mystery Illness?”

  “Um.”

  “Is it?” she pressed.

  “No,” I said, glowering. “I guess not.”

  Okay. She was right. When she put it like that, it sounded crazy. But just because it sounded crazy didn’t mean I wasn’t right. Did it?

  “Okay,” the health department woman said. “Now, what would be a simpler explanation?”

  “Probably what I thought before, that everyone’s faking,” I admitted. “Except that can’t be right, because it happened to me, and I am not faking.”

  She looked at me with real-seeming sympathy and squeezed my upper arm. Like she had learned “comforting a hysterical teenager” techniques at a weekend seminar and was just waiting for a chance to try them out.

  “I know you’re not,” she said with gravity. “So if that’s not the simplest solution, let’s think of some other, simpler ones.”

  “Tricoethylene pollution,” I suggested. “You think Bethany Witherspoon could be right?”

  “Well, let’s look at that. The parents are pretty persuaded, and you can’t blame them, because if there were just one cause, then the solution would be pretty easy. And it would be nice to think there was one easy solution for these girls. So we have an unfortunate spill more than forty years ago, a few miles away from this school, of a chemical with unconfirmed physical effects on those exposed, and symptoms only just appearing in a cluster now. What do you think Occam would say about that?”

  “It sounds far-fetched, actually.” I frowned.

  “It does, doesn’t it.”

  “So, what then? Why can’t it be Emma? I’m telling you, I know what happened to me. It happened. It happened like I said.” I beat my fist on the armrest of the van seat with a pathetic thump.

  The health department woman gazed at me. “Colleen. What grade are you in?”

  “What difference does that make? Senior.” Shrill, Rowley. Come on.

  “And what grade were the first gr
oup of girls to get sick? They were seniors, too, weren’t they?”

  “Everyone knows that! So what?” My fingers plucked at my skirt.

  “St. Joan’s is a pretty competitive school, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is!” I shouted.

  I couldn’t believe she was wasting my time with stupid rhetorical questions when Emma obviously needed help. I didn’t know what kind of help, but wasn’t that Public Health Lady’s job? How could she ignore what was right in front of her?

  “And the first girls to get sick, would you say they were popular? Spazzes? Dorks? Jocks?” she pressed.

  What was this, some eighties teen movie? Who said spazzes?

  “They’re popular. Everyone likes them. Looks up to them, I mean. You already know that, too.”

  “Okay. So, a group of girls in the most high-pressure year”—she ticked each point off on a finger—“of a super-high-pressure school career, and they’re in the highest-pressure social position. Right? What do you think Occam would say about their situation? About your situation?”

  “What do I care what Occam would say?” I protested.

  As I watched her face, I knew with a sinking certainty what she was suggesting. She just didn’t want to come right out and say it.

  “You think we’re crazy,” I whispered, searching her eyes for confirmation.

  “No, no. Crazy is not a useful category in this instance.” She glanced away from me, and I knew I was right.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Admit it. You think we’re all completely crazy.”

  “There’s a condition,” she said, keeping her voice calm and gentle, just like they’d probably told her to do in the seminar. “It’s real, okay? It’s a real illness. Nobody thinks you and your friends are faking. Everyone believes you are really suffering the symptoms you’re suffering from, okay?”

  “What condition?” I asked, waiting to hear some PR doublespeak. I glared at her, suspicious. For one thing, I knew I wasn’t crazy. I certainly didn’t think Clara was crazy. Some of the others, maybe. Anjali was definitely wound pretty tight.

  But I. Was not. Crazy.

  “It’s called conversion disorder,” said Public Health Lady.

  “Conversion disorder? What do you mean, like, religious conversion?” My eyebrows knitted together over my nose so hard, it hurt.

  Through the tinted van windows I saw the two sets of protesters still camped out in the school parking lot. The Whores of Satan people shouted at the Congregationalists, trying to provoke them. The Congregationalists pointed to their signs that said RESPECT and TOLERANCE and DON’T FORGET THE LESSONS OF THE PAST and smiled beatifically. One of them strummed a guitar to lead a sing-along of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” In the great spiritual face-off in the St. Joan’s parking lot, I had a pretty good idea who was winning.

  Was Public Health Lady trying to tell me I was in the grip of religious mania? I reflected that my parents would be pretty surprised, given how much I complained about going through confirmation a million years ago.

  “It sounds like that,” she said. “But it’s actually something very different.”

  “So what is it, then?”

  “Conversion disorder,” she explained, “happens when you are experiencing really serious, really unusual stress in your life. And your body doesn’t know how to handle being under so much stress, so it ‘converts’ it”—here she did the finger air quotes thing on either side of her head—“into physical symptoms.”

  I gave her a dubious look. It sounded fake. It sounded like a polite way of saying they didn’t actually understand what was happening.

  “I think that’s a crock,” I announced, and from the rapid blinking I got in response, I could tell she wasn’t exactly prepared for me to be that hostile. “That sounds like as much of a nonexplanation as PANDAS, which doesn’t even exist. It sounds like a trumped-up way of saying we’re crazy, and you don’t really understand why. Like we can’t help how pathetic we are, but we just can’t hack it.”

  “I can see why you’d feel judged, with a diagnosis like that,” said Public Health Lady, leaning over to pat me on the knee. “But I assure you, this is real. The symptoms of converted stress can vary widely and be extremely debilitating. Verbal tics, hair falling out, muscle weakness, fatigue. It’s a real disorder. It can devastate otherwise perfectly normal, healthy people.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” I insisted. “I’m not that stressed out. And even if I were, how would that make me talk backward? How would it make my friend vomit pins?”

  “Oh, really. You’re not?” she said mildly. “A high-pressure school environment. College admissions on the horizon. Graduation, lots of life changes. Sexuality, dating. Your friends falling sick all around you. A media firestorm. And aren’t you in contention for valedictorian, and on the brink of missing it? I’d say you’re under quite a lot of stress, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who told you that?” I shouted, struggling to my feet, nearly hitting my head on the roof of the van. “Who told you I was missing it by a tenth?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Public Health Lady said reasonably. “The point is, I think you’re being too hard on yourself, Colleen. Conversion disorder is nothing to be ashamed of. And it’s relatively easy to treat.”

  “Oh, yeah? If it’s so easy, how come nobody’s treating it?” I stood with my neck bent over, hands pressed to the van roof.

  “We’ve only just settled on the diagnosis this afternoon. We wanted to run some tests first to rule out tricoethylene poisoning so that the parents would trust our opinion. People haven’t been willing to hear us out just yet. But we’re working on sending Bethany Witherspoon and her ‘team’”—again with the air quotes—“back where they came from. Then we can start to make some real progress. I’ve already had a meeting with the board of trustees. We’re confident that this is the correct diagnosis. And the solution is a special kind of talk therapy, and in some cases, antidepressants. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Which is just a fancy way of learning to observe and modify your own behavior. It’s easy, and you don’t even have to lie on a couch. You’ll see, Colleen. In a few months this will all be over.”

  My certainty wavered. She sounded so sure of herself. If conversion disorder was real, then it wasn’t our fault. Who’s to say we couldn’t be crazy and not know it? Maybe that was all being crazy was—not knowing we were crazy.

  But deep inside me, where I stored all the secret truths that I didn’t like to admit even to myself, where I kept my competition with my friends and my feelings about my body and the things I wanted to do to Spence and the things I dreamt of saying to my parents when I was angry at them and the arm-twisting I sometimes wanted to give Michael and Wheez, when I looked inside that secret box and tried to tell myself that Public Health Lady was right, and I’d just lost my grip along with everyone else, when I opened the lid and peered inside that secret box, I saw Emma’s weirdly red, glowing eyes staring back at me.

  I picked up my bag and flattened my mouth into a stern line.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” I said to her.

  “Oh? What’s that?” Public Health Lady said to me.

  “Look at where we are,” I replied.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “St. Joan’s? It was a convent.”

  “No,” I said. “Look at what town we’re in.”

  “Danvers?” The Public Health Lady looked perturbed, like maybe I was more off my rocker than she thought.

  “Exactly,” I said, sliding open the van door and stepping out into the damp spring afternoon.

  “What’s so special about Danvers?” she asked, sticking her head out the van door after me.

  I turned and gave her a withering look. “You don’t know?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Danvers,” I
said, “changed its name in 1752. From Salem Village.”

  INTERLUDE

  SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  MAY 30, 1706

  You think Mr. Parris forced Tituba to confess,” Reverend Green says, clearly doubting me.

  I shrug, looking down at my hands. “I know he’d been gravely vexed. In want of money. He felt there were forces aligned against him in the village. And it was true.”

  Reverend Green runs a hand through his hair, and it falls handsomely over his eye. He knew what sort of contentious community he took over, at least I think he did. But the proof is stark.

  The smell of supper comes drifting under the door, and my mouth waters. My hearth at home is cold, unless my sister’s kept it going. I banked the cinders before I left. It’ll be cold salted meat for our supper tonight, and some forage, and maybe pone I baked yesterday. The table’s been thin since my parents died.

  “If she, a confessed witch, named the others, then he’d have a means to prosecute them. He’d have proof,” I insist.

  Reverend Green eyes me warily. He sees that the adults had taken over our game. But he also sees that we did nothing to take it back.

  A week and some passes, with the village talking of nothing but who the other six witches might be. Visitors come streaming into town, some who’d lived here and moved away, like our old minister Mr. Lawson, and some who venture in from nearby towns hoping to catch a glimpse of us girls. Wherever I walk now, I feel eyes follow me. The attention makes me squirm, but it enthralls me, too. Abby flowers under so many watching eyes. Betty Parris gets smaller and paler, but Betty Hubbard’s gotten more beautiful.

  Tittibe has confirmed our accusations of Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, and they’ve been locked away at Boston jail. Some of us thought that with the witches removed from the village, our torments would lessen. But Abby and Betty Parris and Betty Hubbard and I continue to be vexed by invisible shapes in the night. Even Mercy Lewis, who’s been bound out to my parents in service, fell down screaming one morning near the fire. If anything, once the known witches were taken away, our torments worsened.